All posts tagged History

Along one edge of the main exhibition space at this year’s Art Dubai art fair is a smattering of galleries from Central Asia and the Caucasus – places like Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan. They’re here as part of an annual “Marker” section that covers a theme or region the organizers want to spotlight, but they also represent one way in which the fair is trying to broaden its geographical reach in line with Dubai’s expansion as a commercial hub. Read More »

Turkey’s new underground rail network harnessed cutting-edge engineering technology to connect Europe and Asia under the waters of Istanbul. But the project has also literally unearthed Istanbul’s history, yielding surprises and challenging assumptions about one of the world’s greatest imperial cities.

The $2.8 billion megaproject built by a Turkish-Japanese consortium offered an opportunity for archaeologists to conduct excavations of unprecedented scale across Istanbul, allowing them to reach under the surface of previously off-limits business and residential districts. At times, tensions have flared between government officials frustrated with project delays and archeologists calling for sensitivity toward the city’s storied heritage. Read More »

The Arab Spring dislodged a longstanding regional political order, but has the turmoil sent the Middle East’s cultural compass spinning, too? Prominent Emirati commentator Sultan al Qassemi argued this case in a recent column on Al-Monitor.com suggesting that the mayhem has helped accentuate a trend where wealthy and stable Gulf cities were starting to supplant old centers like Cairo, Damascus and Beirut as the Arab world’s cultural and commercial hubs.

“While these Gulf cities may be unable to compete with their Arab peers in terms of political dynamism, in almost every other sense they have far outstripped their sister cities in North Africa and the Levant,” he wrote, citing investments including Abu Dhabi’s branches of New York University and the Louvre, as well as Dubai’s status as a center for air travel and Doha’s artistic and educational projects. Read More »